


the great pretender

by kaiyen



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: BJ Goes To Maine, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-War, Repression, the bj/peg hunnicutt lavender marriage, this is my gay BJ manifesto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:27:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29404086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaiyen/pseuds/kaiyen
Summary: After months of silence from Hawkeye, BJ finally goes to Maine when his marriage breaks apart.BJ loves Peg. He also loves Hawkeye. He’s known that for years, knew it while they were still in Korea, never thinking anything of it. He just loves them in different ways, as one is supposed to between their spouse and their friends. It has come to his attention that he may have got it the wrong way around.
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Comments: 8
Kudos: 73





	the great pretender

**Author's Note:**

> yet another bj goes to maine fic..
> 
> anyway. maybe i projected my compulsory heterosexuality onto bj so he's arguably more of a lesbian than a gay man. but he's gay in this. u can read hawk anyway you like x
> 
> thematically linked to the great pretender by the platters so if u want a vibe that's it. let me know if there r any mistakes!!

He’s never been to Maine before. Somehow, a hundred miles past the state line, he still feels like he hasn’t. It seems more like he’s stepped into one of Hawkeye’s old magazines, untouched landscape trapped behind a glossy veneer. It seems like a dream.

It is, however, too cold to be a dream. The cream cable-knit sweater BJ wears itches against his neck, barely worn – it was new, Peg had given him it for Christmas. It had struck him as an odd gift at the time. He’d never had much call for such a sweater in California.

She left him a week later.

It sounds a little too dramatic to think of it that way, BJ thinks. When he first got home, he imagines such a thing would have been apocalyptic. When it did come, however, it hadn’t been at all unexpected. They’d been drifting apart for months – longer than that, even. Seeing their married friends in Mill Valley, going to the dinner parties and the barbecues and the christenings, it had started to seem that they had never been truly close in the first place, not in the way husbands and wives are. Maybe the all-American, white-picket-fence story he’d told himself in Korea had always been a ruse. It certainly felt that way when he’d got home.

The whole thing felt off. He didn’t know what it was. He hardly held any different feelings towards Peg, more that it no longer seemed like those feelings were ones on which a marriage is built. He loved her, of course he did. They had been close friends for a long time before they even got together. Loving her as his friend felt easy. Loving her as his wife was a different story. He felt like he was faking it. As it turned out, so did Peg.

When she told him about the woman she loved, it probably should have surprised him more.

It was a shock at first. It was a shock for all of twenty seconds, and then he gathered his wife up into a big hug and told her it was alright. Something had finally slotted into place.

 _And are you happy?_ he’d asked, pulling back to look at her.

 _Yes!_ she’d burst, tears in her eyes, filled with so much – so much regret, so much fear, so much…so much _joy_.

Peg had hurriedly reassured him that she wanted joint custody of Erin, for them to still raise her together. BJ hushed her – the thought hadn’t crossed his mind – and held her close. More than anything, he felt relief. Relief that it wasn’t some grand wrongdoing on his part, that Peg was _in love,_ not stewing in resentment, that – if he’s being honest with himself, like he so rarely is – he wasn’t alone.

 _You should see Hawkeye_ , she told him after, vaguely.

Maybe any other night, maybe six months before, he wouldn’t have made the connection. Maybe he would have given her a confused look, bid her goodnight, and crawled back into a bottle. Puzzled over why she thought he should turn to Hawkeye for support rather than any of their Mill Valley friends. But he knows. God, how he knows.

BJ’s spent the better half of a year _knowing_. Hawkeye had apparently dropped off the face of the Earth around then, when their obsessive letter writing abruptly stopped with no explanation. Hawkeye’s radio silence had been tough, but it had given him enough time to think.

He thought about how he always felt like he was trying to be somebody else for Peg, whereas with Hawkeye he didn’t. How perpetually lonely he feels in Mill Valley, when he didn’t with Hawkeye, despite being thousands of miles away from his family. How perhaps he shouldn’t be comparing his best friend with his wife.

BJ loves Peg. He also loves Hawkeye. He’s known that for years, knew it while they were still in Korea, never thinking anything of it. He just loves them in different ways, as one is supposed to between their spouse and their friends. It has come to his attention that he may have got it the wrong way around.

The last thing Hawkeye had sent him was a postcard – Crabapple Cove, _Wish you were here!_ emblazoned on its face. It sits folded in his wallet behind his photo of Peg and Erin from Erin’s fourth birthday party, and has done for almost six months. It is worn – from the creases and loose change, from its constant removal and replacement. Hawkeye’s signature ( _Yours always, Hawkeye_ ) is faded from where BJ has brushed his thumb over the ink to feel the indentation of Hawkeye’s pen on its surface. Dated neatly – _Monday January 18 th, 1955_. Almost a year ago.

BJ wonders briefly why he hadn’t come sooner. He’d called of course, to no response but Daniel Pierce’s quiet confirmation that Hawkeye was, at least, still breathing. He bites his cheek and tries not to dwell on it, turning up the radio – The Platters sing out into the car as he passes through frosted country.

“I seem to be what I’m not, you see,” he sings under his breath, tapping the rhythm out on the steering wheel.

The drive this morning isn’t so long – he’s done 48 hours of driving already – but the route from his motel just outside of Boston into Crabapple Cove seems like the longest leg of his trip. He restlessly grinds his teeth.

When he enters Crabapple Cove, it’s exactly how he pictured it. BJ supposes that Hawkeye told him enough stories about it that he may as well have given him a tour guide. The Pierce’s family home – where Hawkeye had been staying since he’d got back – is a little out of the way, but BJ finds it just fine.

The house is moderately sized, its panels painted a faded blue. A rusted bike leans against its wall. BJ parks at the side of the road. He steels himself, holding tight to the wheel for a moment, before he nods and pulls on his coat as he gets out. He walks up to the door in a haze. He can see his breath on the air.

He raps on the door. Draws a steady breath. Prays Hawkeye is in.

The door opens and it’s _him_. Him, with his dark circles under his eyes, his greying hair, his awful posture, and BJ thinks he’s never looked better. The second Hawkeye sees BJ’s face his eyes go wide. They stand in silence – BJ should have planned this out, he thinks, to save him from standing on the doorstep gaping like a fish. He doesn’t know what comes next.

“Beej,” Hawkeye says, finally, like he can’t quite believe it.

It breaks something – BJ lunges forward, inviting himself in, pulling Hawkeye into a tight hug. Hawkeye hesitates for a second, arms at his side, before they slowly wrap around him. BJ can feel Hawk’s hands fist in the back of his coat, feel Hawk press his face into his shoulder. BJ holds him tighter. He doesn’t want to let go.

They break apart, and he still doesn’t – he keeps his hands light against Hawkeye’s arms, against his sides.

Hawkeye shuts the door. “What are you doing here? You travel 3000 miles just to gawk at me?”

“Thought we could get together and have dinner,” he jokes. Hawkeye doesn’t find it funny. “I missed you,” he says honestly – he’s screwed up enough with skirting the truth. “I was worried about you.”

“What have you got to be worried about?” Hawkeye says as he leads BJ further into the house and into the kitchen. The house sounds empty save for them.

He puts his hands on his hips. “Gee, Hawkeye, how about all the unanswered letters I wrote? For all I knew you could have been dead in a ditch.”

“Coffee?” Hawkeye asks, and BJ nods. “I know you called my dad, BJ. You knew I was fine.”

“I knew you were _alive_ , not that you were fine.”

He shrugs. “Same difference.”

BJ sighs. He didn’t come here to argue. “It’s been a year, Hawk.”

“That long?” he replies. “It all seems the same to me.”

BJ knows the feeling. He watches as Hawkeye continues to make coffee and sits down at the table. Hawkeye joins him after a moment, two mugs of coffee between them.

Hawkeye looks at his coffee. “I missed you too, you know.”

He nods. “Why did you stop writing?” he asks gently.

“I didn’t,” he replies. At BJ’s long-suffering look, he stresses, “I didn’t!”

“You still got a few rats in the attic?”

Hawkeye gets up and leaves the room. For a moment, BJ thinks he’s done something wrong, but Hawkeye returns a few moments later. He places a large pile of letters down in front of BJ. All sealed, all addressed to him. There must be upwards of sixty.

BJ touches them gently, spreading them out. “Hawk,” he says simply. All the envelopes feel like they contain several pages – thousands of words written to him that he never read.

“I don’t even know why I never sent them. I held a few back because I thought I was writing too many, then I guess I just got into a habit,” Hawkeye says. “I’m sorry.”

BJ is still speechless as he inspects every letter, letting himself take in every inch of Hawkeye’s scrawl.

Hawkeye paces a little. “I guess I kept thinking-” he starts before he cuts himself off.

“Thinking what?” BJ asks finally.

“It’s stupid,” he says. “That when we were in Korea, no one got as many letters as you. All from Peg. I guess I thought, with me sending you as many letters as your wife did, you’d think it was…queer.”

BJ knows Hawkeye means _odd_ , _weird_ , but it doesn’t stop his stomach churning. “No queerer than I usually think you are.”

Hawkeye glares at him, but he seems to relax. He sits back down opposite BJ. “How long are you staying?”

“You trying to get rid of me?”

He offers him a brief, sad smile. BJ tries not to read into it. “Come on, Mr. Peg Hunnicutt. You’ve got somewhere to be.”

It’s as good a time as any. “Peg and I separated.”

Hawk is surprised – really surprised, BJ can tell, like he always could – but he controls his reaction well. “What happened?”

“It’s okay.” He swallows. “She fell in love with someone else.”

He seems to consider this. “What’s his name?”

“Ruth.”

“Oh,” Hawk says lightly as he studies BJ’s expression, as if searching for some clue of how he’s supposed to react.

He’s trying to gauge BJ’s own feelings about the situation, he realises. So BJ cracks a sly smile. “You’d like her. She’s from Kennebunkport.”

“Kennebunkport! That’s up the road.”

He seems tentative, but there’s a spark in his eyes that BJ hasn’t seen since Korea. Tendrils of warmth spread across his chest. “Originally. She’d just moved from San Francisco when Peg met her,” he continues. “And she’s a socialist.”

Hawkeye laughs.

It’s been so long since he heard it. BJ laughs with him.

“And you’re alright with that?”

BJ continues to smile. “With what?”

Hawkeye matches it. “That your wife’s a communist homosexual now.”

“Well, it makes two of us.” It slips out, but it is what he came here to do, after all. Immediately, he almost regrets it. He can feel anxiety prickle up his spine, his palms begin to sweat as he watches it sink in for Hawkeye.

“You’re a communist?” he asks lightly, uncertain.

BJ can’t bear it. “Hawk.”

Hawkeye frowns, thinking.

“Is that okay?” he presses. It’s unbearable, like something he’d taken for granted – Hawkeye’s acceptance – is falling from his grasp.

“ _Okay_?” His voice is a little strangled. He clears his throat. “We should form a sewing circle.”

It takes him a second. When it hits, solace floods over him and he kicks Hawkeye under the table.

“Hey!”

Their conversation flows a lot easier from there. They talk a little about Peg and Erin, a little about what they know about the rest of the 4077. BJ tells Hawkeye about how his marriage failed. Hawkeye tells BJ about how he had tried to call in September to apologise to no avail.

Hawkeye gets up to clean their cups, like he can no longer stand the pressure of looking BJ in the eye. “I thought- well, I thought it was a good time. I’ve never been religious, I guess, but my mom was. Staying here made me feel closer to that.” He scrubs the mugs with soapy water. “Yom Kippur was coming up, and I couldn’t stop looking at that pile of letters I’d wrote you and how I owed you an explanation. For that and for...” He trails off. The cups are clean, but he obsessively keeps scrubbing. “For all I complained about _you_ leaving without a note, I sure didn’t follow through.”

BJ stands with him, leant against the counter. He listens.

“I had it all planned out. I’d written it down,” he says. “And no one picked up.”

BJ can’t say he knows when in September this was, but he could imagine. The weather was brilliant, the end of summer drawing into some excellent bright evenings. “Peg and I were probably at a barbecue.”

Hawkeye makes a little noise of acknowledgement.

“You could say it now,” he prompts. “If you wanted.”

“Shucks, Beej, I’m afraid I only do sincerity on the High Holy Days,” he says. He sets the cups on the side to drain, but still doesn’t look at BJ. “I told you why I didn’t send them – and I am sorry about that, BJ, believe me. There’s more to it. Yes, I worried that you’d think it was queer,” he repeats himself, “but I was more concerned that you’d think it was _queer_.” He stresses the word. Insinuates.

BJ feels his mouth go dry.

“Because-” he starts before he lets out a breath, like he’s trying to calm himself down. “Because it was. Is. Has been for a long time, Beej.”

BJ feels like he’s stopped breathing. He longs to reach out and touch Hawkeye, but he doesn’t. He owes him that much – to let him get everything off his chest before he says anything.

“I’ve known it for a long time as well,” Hawkeye continues, finally looking up. He looks a little crazed. He looks a little like he’s on the edge of a nervous breakdown. “I’m much further ahead of you in my lapse into deviancy.” He stops again. He looks lost, worried even, and BJ wants to take that look off his face. “There’s never been anyone like you, Beej. I’ve never- There have been other people, other men-”

“Who?” he asks quickly. He doesn’t mean to.

“ _Who?_ ” Hawkeye parrots. It breaks the tone. “Excuse me, I’m monologuing,” BJ grins, and it seems to put Hawkeye at ease. “It doesn’t matter. Tommy, Billy, Trapper-”

“ _Trapper?_ ” That answers that question.

He stares. “Sorry, do you want to hear this or not?”

“Of course,” he says. He really does – though he can’t stand to see Hawkeye upset. Needling him seems to be the best way through it. “Continue, Hamlet.”

“Thank you, Horatio,” Hawkeye replies. He’s serious again, but seems to gain some confidence. “I said that there was nothing there I would miss except you. I was right,” he says. “I miss you so damn much, Beej. I miss your stupid pranks and your stupid moustache. I miss my shoes being nailed to the floor and my socks being stolen. I miss you being the first person I see every morning and the last person I see every night.”

BJ wants to cry. Maybe he is already – he’s too focused on Hawkeye to tell.

“I miss-” Hawkeye stops. “I lo-”

“I love you,” BJ interrupts.

“What?”

“I love you,” he says again, and it’s the easiest thing in the world.

He’d always thought love was difficult. Being Peg’s best friend was easy, but being her husband was one of the hardest things he ever did. He thought that was how it was meant to be – all the books he had read, all of his experience with women made it seem that way – heavy, difficult, more effort put into making it work than it was largely worth. He was wrong, he thinks then.

Hawkeye stares at him. “That’s my line.”

BJ kisses him. It’s brief and gentle, asking permission more than anything else. Hawkeye looks at him with tender, surprised eyes before he leans in and kisses him back. He brings his hand up to cup Hawk’s jaw, brushing his thumb against his cheek, and Hawkeye’s hands go to his waist.

When they part, BJ wraps his arms around him again in an embrace. He feels like some great weight has been lifted. He feels _joy_ , and thinks of Peg’s face when she talked about Ruth.

“I love you,” Hawkeye tells him, holding him close and with a hand at the back of his head like he had that final day in Korea.

BJ buries his head into Hawkeye’s shoulder and lets himself be held. He pulls his arms tighter around Hawk’s back and breathes.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Hawkeye asks.

“Nothing,” he says truthfully. “God, nothing at all.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!
> 
> also i'm not jewish - i know there isn't much jewish hawkeye in the fic and i did some research and reading (both for this and before) and have spoken to a couple of my friends but please do tell me if i haven't done a good job with regards to that and I'll change things!!
> 
> you can find me [here](https://springsteens.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if you fancy :)


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